


Dumb Luck

by laylabinx



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Character Study, Character Undeath, Gen, It's remarkable really, Josh has a ridiculous amount of dumb luck, Near Death Experiences, Saloon Fights, Western, shoot outs, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-11
Packaged: 2018-08-19 12:47:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8208632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laylabinx/pseuds/laylabinx
Summary: Joshua Faraday is about the luckiest son of a bitch you ever wanna meet.AKA: Seven Times Josh Cheated Death and Lived to Tell About It.Slight AU in that the ending is different from the movie!





	1. 6:17

**Author's Note:**

> Damn. I tried not getting attached to this movie but resistance was futile; it had everything I was looking for in a good western so I can't complain! As such, my muse immediately jumped on this idea and, well, that's how this story came about. Hope you all enjoy it!
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing =/

Joshua Faraday is born at 6:17 on a muddy Wednesday evening. He's pronounced dead at 6:18.

His mother is breathless and weeping, damp hair clinging to her face as she waits desperately to hear him cry. A whimper, a whine, anything. The room remains silent and the baby doesn't cry.

She sobs in defeat and collapses on the bed. He's her fifth child and none of his brothers or sisters had survived past infancy. Two of the children died less than a month after they were born and the other two were stillborn. It looks like he's going to be the third.

The pregnancy had been trouble from the beginning, leaving her weak and bedridden with nausea and illness. It didn't help that she was pregnant in the middle of the summer in Nevada. The heat combined with carrying a child made her feel like she was running a low grade fever every second of the day and she was restless and irritable. The baby was also sitting higher than usual, tucked under her ribs and making her breathing shallow and a bit labored. All together, this pregnancy was just miserable.

She didn't care though, she loved and cared for the baby in her belly just like she had all the others. She knows it's a boy by the second month; she can just tell. She contemplates names and meanings and futures as he grows bigger day by day. She sings to him, talks to him, rocks slow and steady in the evening while rubbing her hand in slow circles across her swollen belly.

The dark, ugly thought creeps into her mind that this one won't make it either, that the baby will be doomed for a short, miserable life like all his siblings before. She knows that life is cruel and harsh; it's not uncommon for a woman to have several children but have none of them survive past childhood. She keeps hoping that maybe this one will be different.

She does everything she's supposed to to keep the baby healthy. She stays hydrated and consumes plenty of calcium and vitamins. She sleeps as peacefully as she can (which is difficult with a baby tucked under her ribs) and doesn't overexert herself. She does all of this with the hope that maybe, just maybe, he'll be strong enough to survive.

Her hopes are shattered the day before when she feels him stop kicking. She frowns and touches her stomach, running her hand across her belly and the baby tucked inside. She talks to him and moves around and tries to feel any kind of movement but instead she feels nothing.

She forces herself not to panic, going on about her chores and housework just as she had every day. She knows how inconsistent movement can be and tries to convince herself that nothing is wrong. Her second child, Michael, had hardly moved the entire time she was pregnant with him, kicking once or twice every couple days just to remind her he was there. Maybe this one is imitating the brother he never met and was content to give his mama a stress ulcer before he was ever born.

By that evening, though, the baby still hasn't moved and she's beginning to worry. She taps her fingers on her stomach lightly, hoping the stimulation will produce some kind of reaction. She tries speaking and singing again, reciting prayers and bible verses. She speaks louder, calls him by name, her voice breaking as she does. The baby still doesn't move and she cries herself to sleep that night.

She starts bleeding the next morning, bright red and heavy, and she runs to the neighbor's house in a panic. She can't make it into town on her own and she doesn't know where else to go. Her husband is gone, working up north in a mine that's a three day journey from their little town and he's not due to come back until the next month. She's alone and she's pregnant and bleeding and scared.

Her neighbor, a woman named Mary, catches her at the door and ushers her in the house, shooing her own children outside. The sky is dark grey and turbulent, the threat of rain imminent, but she urges her children to go play somewhere else for a few hours. This is an emergency, one that could end very badly, and they don't need to see this.

The labor is brutal and relentless, lasting for seven solid hours. With her husband's help, Mary clears off one of the children's beds and gently lowers her neighbor onto it, trying to make her as comfortable as she can. Mary holds her hand and dabs sweat of her face while she screams and cries and curses in ways her own mother would have disowned her for. The bleeding slows but the baby doesn't come and she cries harder.

At some point Mary's husband ducks out and fetches the town doctor, realizing the situation is too desperate for them to handle it on their own. It takes close to an hour for him to arrive but he can tell the moment he walks in that this is a dire situation. He rolls up his sleeves, mutters a prayer, and sets to work.

The sky has broken open outside, heavy bands of rain dousing the town and turning the streets into muddy trenches. The mother pushes and strains, cries and screams, but the baby is stubborn and refuses to budge.

The doctor urges her to push one more time and reaches forward, catching hold of something thin and pale. In that moment, between one crack of thunder and the next, the baby is born and the doctor sits back on the stool with him in his hands.

The child is blue and still, the umbilical cord wrapped around his throat like a noose. The doctor cuts it and pulls it away, flipping the limp infant over in his palm and striking his back firmly in an effort to get him to breathe. He flips him back over and sweeps blood and fluid out of his mouth, tapping his index finger against the center of the infant's chest in another vain attempt to encourage spontaneous respiration.

Nothing happens, no breathing, no crying. Nothing. The child is dead.

He shakes his head in defeat and sighs, wrapping the infant in a clean sheet and handing him to the mother so she can say her goodbyes. As devastating as it is, there's nothing else to be done. He'll inform the undertaker and the priest in the morning if the town hasn't washed away by them.

The mother takes the limp, quiet baby into her arms and sobs. It's a desperate, broken noise, more animal than human, and it tears through the room like a knife. She strokes the baby's cold, bluish skin, wiping blood away from his face with her fingers. He's so small, so fragile, and she's lost him like all the others.

"Joshua," she weeps, christening him with a good biblical name just like she had all her other children. The name means 'savior' or 'salvation'; it's bitterly ironic that he won't live up to it's connotation. She presses him to her chest, rocking back and forth slowly, and patting his back with one hand.

She's wrecked and broken, facing the loss of yet another child, and it tears at something deep within her. "You stay with me, you hear?" she mutters as she continues to cradle the limp infant in her arms. "You stay with your mama. You come back to me..."

Mary watches her sadly, looking to the doctor and her husband speaking quietly in the corner of the room. They both look drained and despondent, helpless to fix the situation at hand. Mary has lost a few of her own babies over the years and she knows all too well how overwhelming the devastation can be. The difference is that some of her children lived; she can't even imagine the pain of losing all of them...

There's a tiny sound just then, somewhere between a cough and gag, and Mary's head snaps up at the noise. The bundle of sheets squirms and shifts just a bit under the mother's hand, barely noticeable but there. She freezes too, her hand sprawled across his small, shuddering back.

"Come back to me, baby," she begs, patting his back gently and rocking him again. "Please…"

There's another watery cough, a shuddering intake of breath, and then the baby begins to scream.

His mother lets out a laughing sob and buries her face against the infant in her arms, rocking both of them on the bed. The wailing is loud and piercing but she's too relieved and overwhelmed to care.

"That's it, baby," she sobs, stroking her son's cheek with the tip of her finger. His skin is already gaining some color, the dull blueness fading to a dusky pink. "Cry, cry, cry…"

The doctor rushes back over and scoops the still screaming child (so much for unresponsive lungs) into his arms. He examines him carefully, eventually coming to the conclusion that he's perfectly healthy if a little hypothermic. He hands the child back to his mother who swaddles him up and presses him back to her chest.

The doctor watches them in stunned silence. He has no explanation for it, how a child who was dead at birth could suddenly be revived in his mother's arms, but he's a Godly man and he knows better than to question the Lord's ways. He settles with a miracle and takes note of the time again.

Joshua Faraday is pronounced dead at 6:18. He comes back to life at 6:20.


	2. Of Mines and Rats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forty pounds of bad ideas and dumb luck. His mother's words come back to him now, poking through years of memories and conversation. He thinks he understands what she meant now that he's alone, in the dark, at the bottom of a mine shaft.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! Hope you're doing well! Okay, so canonically Josh does not like rats. Whether he's afraid of them or just plain doesn't like them I figured I'd use that as fodder for this chapter. Hope you all like it! :D

When Josh was five years old his mother snatched him up by the back of his britches and told him he was forty pounds of bad ideas and dumb luck. He didn't know what she meant right then, only that his mother was mad because he was trying to play with a rattlesnake in the front yard. He didn't think about it for a long time, what those words actually meant, until he found himself dropped into the middle an abandoned mine shaft when he was eight.

He'd lost track of how many times his mother had warned him to stay away from the mine. It had been abandoned years before when part of it collapsed, trapping half a dozen men inside and burying them alive. The townspeople had dug and scraped for days trying to rescue them but after a week of not finding any trace of the missing men, it became clear there was nothing left to save. A makeshift memorial was set up in front of it and the entrance was boarded up.

The ground all around it was loose and flimsy from years of digging and burrowing and people tended to avoid the area entirely due to the possibility of the ground collapsing out from under them without warning. There were signs posted around the area warning of death and injury and advising passersby to steer clear of the unstable ground. It was dangerous and hazardous and it was exactly the kind of place little boys liked to play when their parents weren't watching.

There was a pack of them out there today, six in all, and they were all taking turns testing their grit and bravery by circling some of the gaping holes that opened up into the abandoned mine shafts below. There were dozens of holes, some clustered together, others farther apart, and all of them were dangerously close to caving in at any second. The darkness below them was impenetrable save for the few beams of sunlight that cut through the holes and illuminated the tracks down below.

One of the older boys, Moses Baird, was taking it to another level by leaping across the holes and pretending to wobble and sway exaggeratedly after each landing. He's pretend to lose his balance, arms flailing and scrabbling for purchase in thin air. It was a show, a game, and the other boys loved it. After each successful jump, Moses would grin at the look of shock and horror on his friend's faces and repeated the process over another hole.

Josh watches him carefully, waiting for his turn in the spotlight. He was eager to set himself apart from the younger boys in their group, ready to show that he was just as brave (and stupidly reckless) as the older kids. At eight he fell right in the middle of the age group their pack consisted of. The oldest, John, was supposed to be supervising and keeping an eye on the younger boys but at thirteen he was still just as much of a kid as the rest of them and had no trouble joining in. The youngest of their group, Matthew, was Moses' younger brother, just old enough to tag along with the older kids and join them in play. He's five, maybe six, and he follows them around everywhere.

They should have been helping Mr. Willis with his livestock but he let them go early seeing as how most of the chores were finished. Left to their own devices, the boys had to figure out what to do with themselves for the rest of the afternoon. It was hot, there was no school and it didn't take too long for them to find themselves out near the mine again even though they were told probably once a week to avoid it.

Moses makes one more leap across one of the larger holes and lands easily on the other side. He gives his friends a cheeky, gap-tooth grin and nods toward the ground. "Beat that!"

Josh accepts the challenge immediately and, without a word, takes a running jump across one of the largest holes visible. It's easily a three and a half foot gap but he clears it easily enough. The stunt evokes the desired response and the other boys whoop and cheer him on from the other side. They laugh and cheer for a few more seconds before one of them dares him to jump back across with his eyes closed. Never one to back down from a challenge, Josh takes off in a dead sprint, closes his eyes, and leaps across the hole again.

This landing is different from the first in that the ground crumbles away the second his foot touches the other side. One minute he's above ground and the next minute he's below it, tumbling a good fifteen feet into the dark, cold shaft below. He lands with a heavy thud and hisses as a shock of pain jars a choked gasp out of him. Nothing is broken but he landed hard and it knocked the wind out of him.

He can hear the other boys calling out his name, anxiously asking if he's alright. He groans and looks up at the blue sky shining through the hole he fell through. It seems impossibly far away and the walls are almost completely vertical all around him meaning he can't just climb back out. He winces and pulls himself up, dusting dirt off his pants.

"I'm okay," he calls back up, looking down the darkened tunnels on either side of him. They stretch on endlessly in either direction, a gaping void of blackness leading deep into the earth. It makes him shiver. "Anybody got a rope or somethin'?"

John leans over the side of the hole and he can just barely make him out in the dusty gloom. "We don't got any!" he shouts back, looking between the other boys as if for confirmation. He can hear them mumbling amongst themselves for a few seconds, coming up with a plan. "Just stay there, Josh! We're gonna run back to town for help!"

"No, don't!" Josh cries out after them but it's too late. He sees them disappear from the edges of the hole, running back in the direction of the town and leaving him alone. He grumbles in frustration and kicks a rock. He's not so much worried about being stuck down here as he is the verbal lashing he's going to get from his mama when he gets out. She'd told him over and over not to play around here and he didn't listen now this happened.

 _Forty pounds of bad ideas and dumb luck._ Her words come back to him now, poking through years of memories and conversation. He thinks he understands what she meant now that he's alone, in the dark, at the bottom of a mine shaft.

He looks down either tunnel again and tries to figure out what to do. They both look the same, dark corridors of rock and wooden tracks, and it's impossible to tell which one is the safer option. The tunnel is still collapsed on one end but he can't tell which end that is. There are no markers down here, no signs or arrows pointing in the right direction. It's a gamble either way ans he knows it.

He weighs his options for a few more seconds, mentally debating what he should do. If he waits here it will probably be close to dark by the time the others get back and get him out. To be completely honest, he's not too fond of the idea of being down here after dark. Maybe he can find his way out before the other boys get back? They wouldn't need to tell anyone and his mama couldn't be too mad at him if he got himself out without her worrying. Trouble is, from down here and looking up, it's hard to tell which tunnel would lead to the boarded up entrance.

If he takes the wrong one it could lead him deeper into the mine, away from help and away from safety. He could get lost, swallowed up by the mine just like those miners. But if he stays here, he'll have to wait for help to get back and then face his enraged mother. Neither option is favorable but he would rather not have to explain himself to his mother. He takes a deep breath, lets it out slow and takes the tunnel to the left.

The ground is even enough and the walls of the tunnel are high overhead so it doesn't feel as cramped while he walks. The holes they'd been jumping over cut through the ceiling every once in awhile, a bright slice of sunlight cutting through the darkness of the tunnel. He pauses occasionally as he passes under them, looking up at the bright blue sky overhead and wondering if he's going the right way. He keeps following them, thinking it's a good sign that they're still slightly clustered together and not spaced further apart.  
As the track continues to wind on, dipping and raising without warning, he begins to wonder if he's going the wrong way after all. He convinces himself that he couldn't be that deep in the mine, that the entrance should be coming up soon and he just has to keep walking. It should just be around the next bend…

But as the tracks keep winding on with no end in sight, he begins to get nervous. Maybe he took the wrong tunnel...maybe he's gone miles deeper into the mine in the wrong direction…

Josh breaks into a jog, heart pounding and thick waves of anxiety and apprehension tearing at his stomach. He runs across the tracks, careful to avoid broken boards and chunks of rock that have fallen across them over the years. He begins shouting, calling out for help, hoping for any kind of response but nothing comes. The tunnels wind further, the darkness feels heavier, and he gets scared.

The thought creeps into his head that he's going to die down here, alone and forgotten all because he was too stubborn to mind his mama's warnings. The town will put a little cross outside the entrance, the children will be warned over and over again about the dangers of the mine, and his mama will die of a broken heart. He's running now, sprinting through one glaring blast of sunlight and the next, tears streaming down his dusty face.

He wonders if this is what the miners felt like when the tunnel collapsed, when they realized these tunnels had become their graves. He wonders if this is how they felt knowing they were never going to find their way out. He thinks about their bodies that were never found, the darkness and earth that just swallowed them up without a second thought, and he runs faster.

He's on the verge of complete panic now, crushing dread and fear gripping his chest. He has to get out of here, he'll claw his way out if he has to…He has to get out of-

His foot hits something, a rock or a piece of the track, and he trips and lands heavily facedown on the ground. For a moment he doesn't move, he just lays there shaking and crying and wishing he'd listened to his mother. His father had died in a mine when he was still a baby, blown to bits when a spark ignited an underground gas pocket. Josh had never met his father, knew absolutely nothing about him, but it looks like he's going to share a similar fate.

He hears something up ahead, a scittering, scratching sound like claws on gravel, and he looks up slowly. There's a rat about a foot away from him, large and brown with gleaming black eyes. It stares at him, whiskers twitching, and Josh panics. He pulls himself up quickly, backing away and pressing his back against the wall. He hates rats, he's completely terrified of them. He can deal with a lot of things but rats are not one of them.

The rat seems very unconcerned with his dislike and revulsion and turns to scamper back in the direction he had been running in. Josh watches it go, frozen and rigid and unable to move for several seconds. It occurs to him after a few moments that rats would need both a food and a water source to survive and, seeing as how neither of those exist in the mine, it must have come from outside.

He thinks that maybe, if he follows it, the rat could possibly lead him to an exit. But that means _following_ the rat, getting close and trailing after it, and the idea makes his stomach flip. He shivers and stays pressed against the wall for a few more seconds. It takes several long seconds for him to convince himself that it's a better option than aimlessly running around in the dark and it's about as good a plan as any.

He stands slowly, trembling a little, and takes a step in the direction the rat went. The tunnel is dark up ahead but he can still hear the sound of scampers and dull, muted squeaks bouncing off the walls. He stumbles across the rat a few feet further up the tunnel and now there's about a dozen of them swarming around on the floor. They're all moving in a clump, their fur gleaming dully in the hazy light of the tunnel. There's probably ten of them, maybe fifteen, and the sight of all of them squirming and ginning around nearly makes him freeze again. Instead he swallows thickly, clenches his fists, and walks forward.

The rats scatter and scamper away but they're all going in the same direction so Josh follows them. They spread out across the tunnel, a teeming mass of fur and tails, and run through the darkness, oblivious to the lost child trailing along behind them.

After about another quarter mile of winding turns and darkness broken by sunlight streaming in from the holes above, a wall of wood appears in the distance. Josh nearly sobs with relief and runs toward it, scattering the rats as he does. There's daylight shining on the other side, peaking through the thin spaces between the boards, and he knows this is the boarded up entrance to the mine. All he has to do is figure out how to get past the wall now.

The bottom boards are flimsy and partially rotten and the rats scamper out from under them easily. Josh drops down to one knee and grabs one of the bottom boards, pulling it toward him with every ounce of strength he has. The board snaps and splinters and it hurts his hands but he doesn't care. Bright, golden sunlight streams into the tunnel and it's probably one of the most beautiful things he's ever seen.

He grabs another board, ignoring the splintered edges that dig into his palms, and pulls. It comes away just like the first and the hole is just big enough for him to squeeze his way out.

He finds himself flat on his back just outside the entrance of the mine, blinking up at the brilliant sunlight and squinting. He's never been so happy to see the sun and he's never been happier to have stumbled across a disgusting cluster of rats. If he wasn't so terrified of them he'd try to pet one in thanks. Instead he just lays there in the dirt and blinks up at the sky.

He hears a shout in the distance and turns his head, catching sight of a clump of people running toward him. He stands up, brushes himself off, and waves.

The group of boys he was with earlier are running up to him, several coils of rope looped over their shoulders. It looks like they've recruited a few of the older kids in town to help them but luckily there are no adults in the party. Apparently none of them were too willing to tell their parents where they'd been playing.

John skids to a stop in front of him, taking in his dusty appearance and bleeding hands covered in splinters. "We came back for you," he says rather obviously, the rope now hanging uselessly from his shoulder. He looks at the boarded up mine and shakes his head in disbelief. "You had to've been two miles in. How'd you find your way out?"

Josh just grins and shrugs. "Dumb luck."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading guys! More to come soon! :D


	3. Death Wish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The man above him reaches down, grabbing a large fistful of Josh shirt and lifting him off the ground. "You got a death wish, boy?" he growls, low and dangerous like a mountain lion.
> 
> "Kind of, yeah."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! Hope you're doing well! Josh is a bit of a cocky little shit in this chapter so hopefully he's not too OOC. Hope you all enjoy it!

The saloon is crowded and hot, dirt covering the floorboards and dust on the bar. It seems like everything and everyone in here is covered in a fine layer of dust. It took years for the soil to become fertile enough for anything to grow and just months for it to become so dry and arid it was unusable. He had a friend growing up who used to joke that they were all just dirt farmers, tending to their dirt crops in hopes of a bountiful dirt harvest. It wasn't too far from the truth.

He had no plans to be a farmer, though. He had no plans to be a merchant or a shopkeeper or any of the other boring, dusty jobs this town had to offer. He had no plans for tomorrow or next week or anytime in the near future. He had no plans past tonight and this dusty bottle and the dusty table he was sitting at.

He wanted to drink and drown himself in the noise and smoke and dust of this saloon. His mother had died a little over a week ago and he just wanted to block out everything for a while.

The bartender eyed him for a second when he first walked in. He knew Josh wasn't old enough to drink but that didn't stop him from passing a shot glass and a half empty bottle of whiskey to him when he came up to the bar. He knew the kid, he'd seen him in and out of town half a dozen times in the past few years, and he knew his mama. He also knew his mother had been laid to rest a couple of days ago and that sometimes the best way to numb the pain of grief was to blunt it with something stronger.

Josh pays in silver and takes the whiskey and shot glass with a silent nod to the bartender. He knows he's spending what little inheritance his mother had left him and that he shouldn't squander it on alcohol but at the moment he doesn't care. The grief is still raw and fresh and painful and right now all he wants to do was drink.

The whiskey is strong and harsh, burning all the way down past his chest when he swallows, but he knocks it back without a flinch. It fills the void of loneliness that's settled at his core and refused to budge for eight days. It makes him feel light and heavy at the same time, a cloud of lead stubbornly tethered to the earth. It would be ironically funny if he wasn't so miserable. He fills the glass again and drinks.

He doesn't remember who started the fight or why, only that one minute everything is fine and he's getting drunk in peace and the next someone is crashing through his table, shattering his glass and the whiskey bottle with it. Rage and grief, coupled with a healthy dose of alcohol and teenage ire, causes him to throw a punch at the person nearest to him and then suddenly he's tossed into the melee as well.

There's a flurry of punches and kicks, broken bottles and splintered tables, and the saloon descends into chaos. Josh holds his own well enough which is surprising considering his inebriated state. The fighting allows him to release some of the pent up emotions he's been pushing down over the past week and it feels great.

In the middle of all of it someone grabs him by the front of his shirt, lifting him up off his feet. Suddenly he's airborne, sailing over a table and crashing through a window. He lands flat on his back outside the bar, gasping and breathless as he stares up at the star-speckled sky. The view is beautiful and he might have appreciated it more if he wasn't drunk and in pain.

And also if the barrel of a gun hadn't been hovering above his face.

The man above him is tall and ugly, scars roping across his face and disappearing beneath his hat. Apparently he'd been involved in his fair share of bar fights before. His nose is bleeding and he's missing a tooth in the front, blood covering his lips and streaking through his beard. Josh recognizes him vaguely; he's pretty sure he hit him in the face with a barstool.

He grins lazily up at the man. "Evening."

The man growls and spits a mouthful of blood at him. "I'm gonna put a hole through that cocky smile'a yours, boy," he threatens, cocking the pistol for emphasis.

Josh thinks he should be afraid or at least take the threat seriously but he's so drunk right now he honestly doesn't care. It's funny almost, how it's all come to this. He grins again and lifts his chin. "Make sure you don't miss."

The man above him looks even more enraged and he reaches down, grabbing a large fistful of Josh shirt and lifting him off the ground. "You got a death wish, boy?" he growls, low and dangerous like a mountain lion.

"Kind of, yeah."

That earns him an ugly smile and the barrel of the gun presses right between his eyes. "Lucky for you I'm a generous man. I'll grant you your wish." The man grins again, twisted and ugly like a boar, and his grip on Josh's shirt is painfully tight. "Any last words?"

"Your face looks better this way," Josh mutters back, going slightly cross-eyed as he stares at the gun barrel. By the look on the man's face, that was the final straw. Josh is fully prepared to be shot in the face and die in the street like a dog.

The shot never comes though; a voice from the shadows does.

"Kid's got a point, Earl," the voice chimes in from behind them, a man stepping off the porch and into the street. "Your face _does_ look better this way."

He's a bit shorter than the man with the gun, Earl, but he carries himself with more confidence. He has one thumb hooked in a belt loop and his other hand resting on the hem of his jacket. He's not threatening, not yet at least.

"Distracts from some'a the rest of this," he continues, making a circling gesture around his own face.

Earl snarls and looks at him. "Ain't no one askin' you, Tom Higgins," he growls, his gun still trained on Josh.

Tom stops and shrugs one shoulder loosely. "True," he says, hand still hovering close to his jacket. "But are you really gonna kill a teenage boy over something as trivial as a couple of bruises and busted tooth? I know you're a crook, Earl, but that's low even for you."

Earl seems to hesitate for a second, considering the other man's words. He's thinking about it, coming to a decision, and it seems like it takes an awful lot of effort on his part. Finally, he looks back down at Josh and gives him another crooked, bloody smile. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I should just break a couple'a his bones instead. Knock out a few of teeth so we're even." He moves the gun down and taps it, painfully, to Josh's front teeth. "You can get by without these four in the front."

If he wasn't still reeling from the alcohol, Josh is pretty sure he'd be trying to escape or at least talk his way out of this situation. Getting shot wasn't part of his plan tonight but neither was getting his teeth knocked out. He thinks he should probably do something to prevent this. Instead he just lays there, flat on his back and lets the hot, dusty wind brush over him.

Tom isn't impressed with the suggestion and shakes his head slightly. "Let the boy go, Earl. He was just leaving." He turns his attention to the sprawled young man on the ground and gives him a stern look. "Weren't you?"

"Sure," Josh mumbles back, his words slurred and heavy.

"He's not goin' anywhere," Earl growls, leveling his gun on Josh again. "Not til' I'm finished with 'im."

"Earl," Tom says, his voice a warning and the name a threat.

Earl hears it and, because he has all the sense God gave a brick, decides to turn the gun on Tom. The other man is faster though, snatching his own pistol from the holster beneath his jacket and firing two quick shots. One bullet hits Earl in the wrist, shattering the bones and causing him to drop the gun. The other hits him in the knee and he goes down like a sack of rocks. He screams and curses and froths in the middle of the street, blood pooling from his wounds into thick, muddy puddles in the street.

"Tried to warn you," Tom says almost apologetically, walking over and plucking the discarded gun from the ground. He opens the chamber and empties the bullets into the pocket of his jacket. "But you're stupider than a mule and just as stubborn."

He drops the now empty gun back onto the ground beside the wounded, writhing man. "I'll send a doctor for you."

For a few seconds the streets are silent save for the moaning and cursing of Earl. The fight is still raging on inside the bar and it won't be long before the sheriff and his deputies come to break it up but for the moment everything outside is mostly still.

Tom steps forward and looks down at the young man still laid out in the street. "You alright, boy?"

Josh manages a nod, his head bobbing in the dirt. "Yup."

"Good. Get up." The words are accompanied by a kick in the shoulder. "Sheriff'll be here any minute and I'd rather not have to explain this," he says, nodding toward the wounded man in the street next to him.

Josh complies and sits up slowly, wincing a bit as he straightens. The window and the street had not been kind to him and he won't be surprised if he's not riddled with bruises tomorrow.

He dusts himself off and stands slowly, holding out a hand to Tom. "Thanks for the help."

Tom looks at his hand but doesn't shake it. "Don't thank me," he tells him shortly, turning and walking away from the saloon. "I didn't do nothin' for you."

Josh stands there for a few seconds, watching him walk away. He glances at his would-be murderer still twisting and cursing on the ground and then back at the other man's retreating form. He has no idea who this man is or what he's doing here, he's never seen him before, but for some reason he follows him.

"Wait," he calls out, jogging to catch up with him and regretting it immediately when the bouncing motion causes him to wince. "Where'd you learn to shoot like that?"

Tom doesn't stop walking but he glances back at Josh as the boy comes up behind him. "My daddy taught me," he says, never slowing down even as Josh struggles to keep up. "Yours never taught you?"

"Never had one to teach," Josh replies, finally catching up with him and panting just slightly. Alcohol and injuries are a bad combination. "He died before I met 'im."

Tom glances at him and then looks back ahead. "Shame," he says, turning down a side street toward the stables. He walks fast and purposefully, ducking through one alley and stepping out into another street. It's almost like he's trying to lose the young man he has trailing along behind him.

Josh keeps following him and he finally stops, scowling. "Listen, kid, I'm not the kinda person you wanna follow around like a lost puppy. Go home."

"Don't have one to go back to," Josh says, swallowing tightly as he does. It's true; his mother is gone, their property will be sold to the highest bidder at the end of the month, and he doesn't have anything tying him to this town. The dust on his boots in the only thing he plans to take with him when he leaves.

"Let me come with you," he says suddenly, the words tight and excited. "Teach me to shoot."

Tom looks at him and shakes his head. "No."

Josh frowns and digs into his pocket, pulling out the last few pieces of silver to his name and holding them out. "Please," he says, struggling to keep his voice from cracking when he speaks. "I'll pay you."

This causes Tom to pause, stopping in the middle of the dusty street and regarding the boy in front of him. He's tall for his age, just out of puberty and gangly, nothing but long legs and arms. He's probably not a day over sixteen but he has sharp eyes and squared shoulders; a good fighter's stance. He might make a decent gunman with the right instruction.

Tom sighs and shakes his head. "Put your money away, kid," he says, nodding for the boy to follow him to the stables. "I'll teach you to shoot for free but that's it. You get yourself killed because you're too stupid to back down from a fight then that's on you." He leads him over the stables and unties a black mare toward the back. "And if you slow me down I'll leave you in the desert. Got it?"

Josh nods once in understanding and slips the silver back into his pocket.

"Good," Tom mutters, leading the horse out of the stable and adjusting the saddle. "What's your name, boy?"

"Josh," he tells him, straightening a little as he speaks to bring himself up to his full height. "Josh Faraday."

Tom gives him another once over and nods. "Nice to meet ya, Josh Faraday. Get on the horse."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading guys! More to come soon! :D


	4. Faster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Respect your guns, Josh," he told him one afternoon. You treat your guns like you treat a good woman and they'll never let you down."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! This chapter was a fun way to play around with the idea of how Josh learned to gamble and got his guns. Hope you all like it! :D

Josh is twenty-two years old the first time he kills a man. It was bound to happen eventually; their line of work came with the knowledge that at some point it would come down to you and your gun and you have the be faster than the person shooting at you. He's managed to avoid the inevitability of death for the past six years but it wouldn't last forever and he knew it.

Tom took great pains teaching him how to shoot a gun properly and even greater pains teaching him how to shoot without killing. He taught him to aim for the hands and arms, a crippling move rather than a killing one. In his view the only time you should shoot to kill was if there were no other alternatives. Josh had only ever seen him kill another man in a fight a handful of times and each time it was because he was put in a position where that was his only choice.

"Respect your guns, Josh," he told him one afternoon after a duel devolved into a murder. The other man had accused Tom of cheating him out of some money and wasn't going to let him walk away without a bullet in his breast. Diplomacy was useless and peaceful talks were completely out of the question; the man wanted blood and wouldn't stop until he had it. Tom was faster though, Tom was always faster, and the man was dead before he ever pulled the trigger.

Tom shook his head in disgust and slipped the gun back into its holster, looking over his shoulder at the younger man at his back. Their partnership was an odd one but they always watched each other's backs. "You treat your guns like you treat a good woman and they'll never let you down."

Tom has two guns that he's christened Ethel and Maria and he takes care of them with his life. Ethel was named in honor of his mother and Maria was named after his wife. Josh didn't know much about Tom's past or his relationship with Maria, if she had died or if she left him, but he knows she's gone now. He thinks she must have been a wild one either way; the gun named in her honor is touchy and a bit unpredictable but it always worked for Tom.

He hears Tom talk about her when he's drunk sometimes ("here's to you, Maria," he muttered one night, raising a shot of whiskey to the empty air when he thought no one was looking) but Josh knows better than to ask any questions. Instead he just takes his advice and respects the pistol in his care.

Tom didn't have a designated profession, he was more of a drifter than anything. He had a pocketful of skills to his name, many of which he taught Josh along the way, and he used them from one town to the next to keep their heads above water. He was a carpenter and a cattle rustler, a blacksmith and a broker; he knew a little about a lot of things and a lot about a few things. He wasn't the best mentor in the world but he was the best Josh could have asked for. Even if Tom didn't always think so.

Josh had been following Tom since he was about sixteen, jumping from one job to the next, one town to the other. Sure, Tom had grumbled about it for the first couple of months, muttering that Josh needed to figure out his own way of life instead of following in the footsteps of others. But Josh was smart and a quick learner and a lot of the jobs Tom took required more than one set of hands so he stopped grumbling after a while and just let the kid follow along.

They've stopped in a little town outside of Tucson called Legacy that probably won't live to see the end of the century. There are literally dozens of identical towns all over the country that were established with the hope of success and fruition that dry up as soon as the mines are depleted and the rivers run dry. Little towns like this had to be strong to survive and even stronger to become permanent. Problem was, by the looks of it, Legacy wasn't either of those things. The town has all the staples one would need for even the most fleeting success, though: a church, a jail, and a saloon.

Tom had taken a job that was set to last for a few weeks and he managed to secure a position for Josh as well. They work on a ranch with a man named Adams during the day, mending fences and wrangling livestock and patching up the barn. It's long, hot work but Adams pays them well and treats them like old friends. In the evening, once the work has been done and Adams releases them from the ranch, they find ways to entertain themselves in town. Tom was a good enough man but he wasn't perfect; he had an affinity for liquor, gambling, and women, all of which could be found in abundance at the saloon.

That's where they've found themselves again tonight, sitting at a table with a stack of cards and a couple bottles of liquor. There are three other men there with them but Josh can only remember one of their names. The burly man to his right is named Regis and he looks remarkably like a boar wearing men's clothing. The other two men are brothers, James and Robert or Jack and Richard (Josh honestly can't remember) and they're both so nondescript it's not even worth committing them both to memory. If the color beige was a person it would be these two.

The one thing they have going for them is that they're good at poker. They've been playing the better part of two hours and James/Jack and Robert/Richard have won at least half of the games between the two of them. Regis has won a couple of hands and Tom has had a few successful turns of his own. Josh has won two hands. He's got a load of dumb luck under his belt but none of it factors into card games apparently.

"Just gotta learn to read the cards, kid," Tom tells him with a bit of a drunken grin when Josh grumbles a curse under his breath.

"You know I can't read," Josh mutters back defensively, shoving another penny in Robert/Richard's direction.

Tom just smirks and takes a sip of his whiskey. "Then learn."

That was one of the things about Tom; the word "can't" just didn't exist to him. He didn't accept it as an excuse or a reason and had very little sympathy for those who did. If you didn't know something, learn it. If you couldn't do something, figure it out. There were no allowances or compromises; "can't" didn't exist.

Josh was still young enough to get frustrated and huffy when he couldn't do something but Tom would just smirk and shrug his shoulders at his plight. "No man ever learned something in a day, Josh," he'd tell him, watching as his young partner struggled with whatever it was he was stuck on. "And you ain't gonna be the first."

Tom taught him everything he knew (which was a lot) so it wasn't hard to see how he'd been successful all these years. He taught him how to practice with his gun, how to clean and take care of it so it never backfired. He taught him how to gamble and shuffle cards, the art of trickery and manipulation when the game required it. He even taught him a couple of magic tricks, little sleights of hand that looked like pure witchcraft to the untrained eye.

The one thing he never taught him how to do was cheat and the one time he caught him doing so, he gave him a black eye for the deceit. "Real men don't cheat, boy. You win fair 'n square of you don't win at all. Cheatin' is one of the fastest ways to get yourself shot in these towns and I ain't gonna help you if you get caught."

Josh was still learning, picking things up along the way, but he was getting a handle on things pretty quickly. Gambling was still a bit of an issue, though; he needed to figure out how to play the game without losing his ass at every hand.

There's a bit of a commotion up near the bar and Josh looks up to see a drunken patron hassling one of the dancing girls. His hands are on her and she's trying to pull away but he's not letting her. Josh glances back at Tom and sees the older man's jaw clench.

That was another thing about Tom; disrespecting and abusing women was unacceptable. Tom didn't have a lot of rules but the few that he did have were resolute. No cheating and no abusing of women or children. If either of those rules were broken, Tom had no problem dealing with it himself.

"Pardon me, gentlemen," he says, standing slowly and resting his hat on the table. "Somethin' I need to take care of real quick." He stepped away from the table and tapped Josh on the shoulder twice as he passed, a silent message that said 'watch my back.'

Josh nods without saying anything and turns sideways in his chair, watching the older man walk across the room toward the hassled dancer. His hand drifts to the pistol at his hip but he doesn't pull it out yet, he doesn't even touch it. Tom had told him once that a man never touches his gun unless he's planning to use it; it wasn't time for that yet.

They're too far away for him to hear the conversation but he can make out the gestures well enough. Tom is speaking to the man harassing the dancer and the man looks like he can't decide whether he wants to punch him or ignore him. Tom is nothing if not persistent though and makes it impossible for the other man to ignore him even if he wanted to. This will turn into a fight before it's all said and done and there's a heavy tension in the atmosphere that wasn't there before.

Josh sees another group of men start to rise up near the bar, friends of the patron hassling the dancer no doubt, and he stands as well. He hears Regis and the Bland Brothers stand up behind him but no one moves for the moment, all of them simply waiting and watching for the right moment.

Someone fires a gun, it's hard to tell who or from where, but the saloon descends into utter chaos instantly. Tom grabs the woman and pulls her behind him, shoving her in the direction of the bar for cover. The drunken patron makes a grab for him but Tom sidesteps and shoots the man in the leg, stepping over him neatly when he crumples.

The man's friends are all pulling their guns while the dancing girls around the room scream and run for cover. There are explosions of gunpowder and broken glass everywhere and the saloon has turned into a full-fledged war zone.

Tom is holding his own well enough but Josh isn't about to leave him to face the rest of the crowd on his own so he pulls his own pistol out and joins the fight. His pistol is smaller and less powerful than the two guns Tom has but they get the job done and that's all that matters.

He finds himself back-to-back with his mentor, shooting back at the men firing at them. Tom glances over his shoulder at him and elbows him in the side, nodding toward the clump of girls hiding behind the bar. "Get them outside, I'll cover you."

Josh wants to argue but he knows it would be pointless; Tom's word went above everything else so it was easier to just listen than fight it. He returns a few shots, hitting one or two of the men across the room, and ducks behind the bar where the terrified girls are gathered. He grabs one of them by the arm and she grabs the others hiding with her and he drags them all toward the door together.

He kicks the door open and pushes them out into the street one at a time, covering them as they run away from the firefight inside. He's gotten nearly all of them out of the saloon and into the relative safety of the street but it doesn't go unnoticed. One of the men from the other table manages to sneak up on him while his back is turned and breaks a whiskey bottle over the back of his head. Josh bites out a curse and staggers, gripping the side of the door to keep himself upright.

The remaining two girls screams and try to run but the man grabs one of them by her hair and jerks her backwards to him. Josh curses again and goes for his gun but the man is just a little faster, shooting the pistol out of his hand and sending it skittering across the floor. The shock is enough to dislocate his thumb and jar his wrist and Josh realizes he's well and truly screwed then.

The man aims again but never gets the chance to fire as a bullet punches its way through his chest from the back. The man gasps and chokes on blood, collapsing to his knees and releasing his hold on the girl. She screams again and runs, disappearing out into the street with the others.

Tom approaches him from behind, kicking the dead man out of the way. He gives Josh a once over and frowns. "Where's your gun?" he asks, noticing the younger man cradling his empty hand.

Josh opens his mouth to respond but then there's a barely audible click from across the room and suddenly Tom is standing in front of him, his back to Josh. There are two short blasts and the drunk man from before, the one who was started this whole thing, staggers back, clutching his bleeding shoulder and dropping his gun. Tom is still standing in front of him, gun held level in his hand, and he's watching for the man to get up again.

For a moment Josh thinks it's over, that the fight is done and there's nothing left but the apologies and cleanup. But then Tom sways and staggers back and he knows something is wrong.

He steps forward to steady him, catching him underneath the arms, and his hand comes away bloody. Dread hits like a punch in the gut and he looks down to see the blossom of crimson spreading fast and bright across the older man's shirt. The bullet hole is a gruesome, bloody mess and it's high up and centered. It's a fatal shot and they both know it.

"Oh God, Tom…" Josh stammers, pressing one bloody hand over the hole in a vain attempt to staunch the gush of blood. "J-Just hang on, alright? I'll get the doctor, you're gonna be fine…" He knows it's a lie, they both do, but denial is a strange thing and it makes him babble out meaningless reassurances.

This wasn't supposed to happen, Tom was the best gun man he'd ever seen. He was sharper, more precise, reacting on instinct and intuition. Tom was also faster, always had been. Faster to react to the sound of bullet dropping into the chamber. Faster to realize he couldn't return fire in time and that the bullet would have struck Josh and killed him where he stood. Faster to step in front of his young partner and take the bullet for himself. Tom was always faster...

Tom just shakes his head, blood staining his teeth and trickling out from the corner of his mouth. "Don't you forget everything I taught you, boy…" he gasps, his voice gurgling and broken as blood fills his throat.

He passes his gun to Josh, pressing it into his hand with blood-slicked fingers. "You take care'a my girls now," he says with a throaty gasp, his breath shuddering and shallow. "Treat 'em right...and they'll return the favor…"

He gives him a small, bloody grin and goes still, gone from one breath to the next.

For several seconds Josh doesn't move, he just stares at the dead man in his arms and the pistol in his hand. He's numb and detached, watching the world pass around him like he's looking at it through someone else's eyes.

He doesn't remember laying Tom down on the ground and standing up, the pistol still gripped in his bloody hands. He doesn't remember crossing the room, stepping over bodies and bottles and broken tables. He doesn't remember coming to a stop in front of the man on the ground, the man with bleeding leg and bleeding shoulder. The man who shot Tom.

What he does remember is the man babbling out some kind of apology, an excuse, something he thought might spare his life. He remembers the look on the man's face when he realized there was nothing in the world that could save him now.

He remembers Tom's words the first time he ever witnessed him kill a man. _Six pounds of pressure, Josh,_ Tom had told him once _. That's all it takes to kill a man._ He remembers leveling the pistol between the man's eyes and pulling the trigger. He remembers the recoil and the splatter of blood and the heavy, oppressive silence that followed.

He's twenty-two years old and he just shot a man in cold blood. It should probably feel worse than it does but honestly Josh is too numb to care. He tucks the gun into his holster and steps away from the body, walking back across the room toward Tom. The older man is still on the floor, right where he left him, blood staining his clothes in bright crimson patches. He's still dead and nothing will change that.

Josh drops down to one knee beside Tom and fishes his other gun out of the holster. The metal is smooth and warm, fitting into the palm of his hand like it was made to be there. Maria and Ethel, Tom's leading ladies.

He reaches out and squeezes Tom's shoulder once, a silent thanks and an apology. Tom deserved better than what he got out of life; he deserved better than this. He says a silent prayer and lets his hand linger for a second more before pulling away.

"I'll take care of your girls, old man," he says quietly, standing slowly and walking out of the saloon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Tom =/ Thanks for reading guys!


	5. Jacks and Gallows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The noose is slipped over his head and tightened and the preacher beside him gives him last rites. Josh takes a deep breath, lets it out as a sigh, and the trapdoor drops out from under him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is how Josh got his horse. Just a fun idea to play around with! Hope you all enjoy it! :D

He's going to die today, that much is certain. It's just a matter of when and where and what method. Honestly he wishes they would just get on with it already; the wait is boring and if he's going to be killed he'd rather they just do it and be done with it.

His dumb luck had finally run out five days earlier in a little town called Robertson when he shot the owner of a ranch and stole his horse. To be fair, the man had it coming; he was crooked as the day is long and had every intention of cheating Josh out of the money he owed him once the job he hired him for was finished. Not only that but he was abusive to his horses and that was something Josh just couldn't allow.

He had taken a page out of Tom's book and became a transient worker, bouncing from one town to the next and working just long enough to make his cut. He used the skills he'd learned from Tom as well as a few others he'd picked up along the way and all-in-all made a pretty decent living at what he did.

One skill Tom hadn't taught him in all their years together (and one that probably had the old man spinning in his grave daily) was the art of hustling. Tom may have taught him how to gamble but Josh taught himself how to hustle. He learned early on that underestimation was often the best advantage when it came to some situations and he'd mastered the art of deception and trickery in saloons across the country.

See, it was never about the end game, it was all about the setup. A successful setup ensured a much greater payout in the end and Josh had become something of an expert at that.

And because he was an expert in the art of a setup, it wasn't too hard to figure out that his employer was doing just that. The man, a weasley little snake by the name of James Stanton, had hired him on his second day in town. The job was straight-forward and simple, clearing a section of land for cattle and livestock and building a perimeter fence to keep them from wandering off. Stanton told him the job shouldn't take longer than about two weeks and he was willing to pay him $10 per week for the work put in.

It was a good job with decent pay and Josh had agreed to it without too many questions. That is until he realized that Stanton was a conniving rat who wasn't planning on paying him anything once the job was done. He planned to hire him for free labor and then boot him out the door once he got what he needed. In all likelihood, he probably thought Josh was just a traveling idiot who landed in town and was stupid enough to say yes to the first job that came along.

Josh is man enough to admit that part of it was, indeed, his fault; there were no contracts or paperwork he signed that he could use when it came to fighting his word against Stanton's. That was something Tom had stressed in every job they took: requesting/forcing their employer to sign something that ensured payment upon completion of the job in question. It was backup against the very situation Josh found himself in now, a way to use the employer's word against his actions if it ever came down to it. Too bad Josh didn't remember that part until it was too late to back out.

It wasn't the end of the world though, just a bit of challenge. Stanton was sleazy and underhanded but Josh could be just as ruthless. He wasn't one to let himself be played and Stanton made the grave mistake of thinking he could outsmart him. Stanton thought he was just a dumb hick so Josh played that part for everything it was worth.

Stanton was as slimy as they came but he was loaded and loved bragging about his success. A smarter man probably would have kept his level of wealth more private but Stanton wasn't a smarter man and he didn't mind rubbing his money and prosperity in the face of his "dumb" hired hand. He held the deed to a silver mine a few hours north and was reaping the benefits of it once every few weeks. Between the actual silver extracted from the mine and the bank notes he got for it, he was incredibly well off and would continue to be that way so long as the mine didn't run dry.

Josh bit his tongue and bided this time, continuing to play his role as the dumb hick while he finished the job and listening carefully to figure out where Stanton kept his riches on the property. It didn't take long for him to figure out there was a false bottom in one of the drawers in Stanton's desk that hid several dozen banknotes he was too stupid/stubborn to take to the bank. He thought the money was safer in his hands than anywhere else and was determined to keep it there. And Josh was just as determined to steal it.

The last day of the job came and ended about as badly as Josh expected it to, with Stanton kicking him off the property with not a cent to his name. Josh pretended to be properly furious and outraged and vowed to fight Stanton for what for what he owed him. Stanton just laughed and slammed the door, convinced he'd duped yet another dumb drifter into working for him.

That was fine; he didn't know Josh had every intention of coming back and robbing him blind later that night while Stanton was away at a town meeting.

It wasn't the most honest line of work, sure, and both Tom and his mama probably would have had quite a lot to say about it but he reasoned it was a matter of justice and fairness (he doubts he's the only one who's been screwed over by Stanton) so it didn't weigh on his conscience too much. He was going to get what was owed to him and there wasn't anything that was going to stop that.

To be perfectly honest, he probably would have just taken the money and gone on his way if it hadn't been for the horse.

He bided his time for the rest of the afternoon, coming back later that day when he knew Stanton would be gone and the house would be empty. Gaining access to the house without being seen meant cutting around the side of the barn and back toward the stables. Josh had only ever been back in the stables a handful of times to get more supplies for the fence but he always noticed the horses seemed extra fidgety and wary of humans. He didn't think too much of it at the time, convincing himself that it was just their reaction to a new face in their territory. That belief shifted rather dramatically when he came across the pen set up near the stables.

There was a single horse staked out in the center of the pen, the rope around its neck tight enough to cut into the skin. It was a stallion, a gorgeous red bay with broad shoulders and long, strong legs. The horse's head was down, nostrils flared and sides heaving. A thick sheen of sweat covered its back and legs, glistening in the hot afternoon sun.

The stake was driven deep into the ground, too far away for the horse to reach water or food, and there was no shade anywhere nearby meaning the hot Arizona sun was beating down right on top of him all day. The ribs were visible and there were welts and cuts covering its coat, a sure sign of a whip or a crop. Thinking back on it, Josh realizes he'd seen similar marks of abuse on the other horses in the stables. Apparently Stanton thought the best way to break his horses was through abuse and starvation and Josh had never been more disgusted.

Josh stared at the stallion for several long moments, debating on what he should do. He couldn't leave it here, not like this. The horse looked like it was only a few hours away from dropping dead in the pen and he couldn't live with himself if he did nothing.

Silver forgotten for the moment, Josh crept into the pen, moving slowly and cautiously toward the stallion. It eyed him warily, nostrils flaring and huffing in warning. He kept one hand up, showing he had nothing he could use as a weapon or for abuse, but the stallion remained wary. It stamped the ground restlessly as he got closer and tried to back away more than once.

It only took a second for Josh to get the rope loose from the stake but it was almost more than the horse could bear. The second it was free, the stallion bolted toward the back of the pen and tried to jump the fence. Josh was content enough to let it go, dropping the rope to the ground with disgust and turning back toward the house. Too bad Stanton was waiting on the other side of the fence with a pistol.

There was no exchange of words, no explanations, just a single shot and then a dead ranch owner. Josh was faster with his gun and he was also angry about the horse so Stanton never really stood a chance. The "dumb hick" surprised him and it cost him his life.

It should have ended there with Josh slipping out of town on the next train out but Stanton had friends and business associates who had come with him back to the house and they witnessed the whole thing. That's where Josh's dumb luck ran out and how he found himself tossed in a jail cell in Robertson, Arizona.

He was found guilty of the murder (because of course he was) and the next two days had been spent preparing the town square for an execution. There was a debate between a firing squad or a hanging and honestly he doesn't even care at this point if they'll just get on with it. Robertson apparently had about as much crime as they did measurable rainfall so the entire town was going to turn out for the execution and Josh was going to die as a spectacle. Perfect.

The wait ends on a Thursday morning. The sheriff comes to get him just before noon, jerking open the cell door and grabbing a fistful of his shirt. Stanton had been a personal friend of his so he was more than happy to see Josh punished to the full extent of the law.

He drags him out of the jail cell roughly, shoving him into the dry, dusty street. Josh staggers a few times but the sheriff never slows down, tugging him along like a disobedient dog. He drags him through the street and toward the makeshift gallows that's been constructed in the center of the town square.

A crowd has gathered around the gallows, men, women, and children, and they all watch with set jaws and judgemental eyes as he's dragged up to the stairs of the scaffold. A noose is already tied up, a preacher standing next to the hangman, and all that's left are the long steps up to the platform. Josh feels like he should be nervous or angry about it but honestly he's just annoyed. Being put on display for the entire town to see was not how he wanted to go out but that's exactly what's about to happen.

He's pushed up the stairs and positioned over the trapdoor in the platform. The sheriff announces his crimes to the crowd gathered around the gallows and they all hiss and spit at him like James Stanton had been a saint in their town. Josh resists the urge to roll his eyes.

The hangman offers him a hood but he shakes his head defiantly. If the townsfolk want to watch this unfold then he's going to make them endure every gory detail. He's witnessed hangings before and he knows how ugly they can get; he's going to make sure they watch.

The noose is slipped over his head and tightened and the preacher beside him gives him last rites. Josh takes a deep breath, lets it out as a sigh, and the trapdoor drops out from under him.

He expects the noose to tighten further and snap his neck the second the rope straightens. He expects it to choke the life out of him, cut off his oxygen and cause him to swing and dance at the end of the rope like a macabre puppet. He expects a lot of things but what he doesn't expect is for the rope to snap and drop him into a crumpled heap on the ground beneath the platform.

He lands with a heavy thud, the noose still looped around his neck but the rope frayed and tattered one end. He can see it from the corner of his eye and if he didn't know any better he'd almost think the rope had been chewed on by rats. He almost laughs at the irony of it but keeps it to himself.

The townspeople gathered around the gallows are just as stunned and for several seconds no one moves. Josh uses that to his advantage and gets up and runs. His hands are still tied behind his back and it makes running ridiculously awkward but he gets by well enough. The crowd parts around him, still too astonished and confused to step in and stop him, and he breaks through them like a salmon swimming upstream.

Finally, the sheriff and his deputies seem to realize that their prisoner is, indeed, escaping and start firing after him. They're all terrible shots though, the bullets missing and bouncing off the walls of shops and houses, shattering glass and zipping past his head. He keeps running, ducking through alleys and behind buildings, dodging the men chasing after him and running as fast as he can.

He pauses for a split second behind the back wall of a bank and finds a rusty nail half-hammered into the wall. It takes a few seconds but he manages to work the nail through the already tattered ropes at his wrists, pulling them away and freeing his hands. He drops the rope to the ground and doubles back across the town, heading in the direction of the town jail.

It's a stupid plan, he realizes it even as he's running, but his guns are still sitting on the sheriff's desk and he'll be damned if he's going to leave them there. Tom left them in his care and he's not about to let someone else take them from him.

The jail looms in the distance and he dashes across the street toward the building. He can still hear the sheriff and his men chasing after him, searching the town for their wayward criminal, but, just like any good hustler, he's going to use their search to his advantage. Surely they wouldn't think to go back to the jailhouse to look for him, only an idiot would go back there. And, to be completely honest, Josh is a bit of an idiot and that's exactly where he goes.

His guns are still sitting on the shelf behind the sheriff's desk, gleaming and pretty like they always are. He snatches them off the shelf and grabs his belt and holster as well, slipping it on and ducking out the back door. He doesn't have any bullets but honestly he's not as concerned with that; he plans on skipping out of town the second he gets outside.

The clump of enraged citizens running toward the jailhouse make that plan a bit harder to accomplish, however. Josh curses and runs down an adjacent alley; apparently his little act of deception hadn't been as cunning as he's hoped.

He cuts between two more buildings, running toward the edge of town, but the sheriff and his men are close on his heels. He knows they'll catch him and gun him down in the street, it's only a matter of time, but he'll make them work for it. His stroke of luck will eventually run out and he'll meet his end with a bullet in the back-

There's a flash of movement at the end of the alley and he skids to a stop, staring in disbelief. There's a horse at the end of the alley, circling and fretting like it's been waiting for him impatiently. It's the same stallion Stanton had kept staked in the pen, he's sure of it. He's not sure what it's doing here, waiting for him, but he doesn't care.

Far be it from him to look a gift horse (literally) in the mouth so he keeps running and grabs onto it. The stallion breaks into a gallop the second he touches it, tearing off in a terrifying sprint away from town. Josh somehow manages to hang on, tangling his fingers in the stallion's mane and swinging himself up onto its back. The horse never slows down and the town and its enraged citizens disappear in the dust behind them.

He clings to the horse and lets out a heaving sigh as it continues to run. He doesn't know what to think about this, whether he should thank God or some other deity, but he's nearly giddy with relief. He slumps forward a bit and rests his forehead against the horse's neck, laughing long and hard as the animal gallops on. Eventually, the stallion begins to slow and drops into a careful trot once it's certain the danger is gone. They're out in the middle of the desert, no sign of civilization for miles around them, and the horse slows to a walk.

They travel along for about another quarter of a mile before coming across a creek bed. Josh slides off the horse and leads it over to the water, letting it drink and rest while he works at untying the noose around his neck. That was the closest he's ever come to kicking the bucket and he'd like to avoid a repeat experience anytime in the near future if possible.

He finally wrestles the rope off and tosses it into a bramble bush along the creek bed. The horse is still standing there, eyeing him carefully like it's waiting for him to get done before it starts walking again. He briefly considers letting it go, releasing it back into the wild, but they're 1-for-1 in saving each other now so he figures maybe it's a sign.

He stands and brushes a hand along the stallion's side, fingers brushing over a barely healed brand on its flank. It's a thick 'J', probably standing for for James Stanton, and Josh frowns angrily at it.

"You seem like more of a Jack to me," he tells the horse, thumb brushing over the brand one more time. "Wild Jack."

The stallion huffs, whether out of agreement or disdain, he's not sure, and swishes its tail. Josh takes it as a sign and pats the horse's side gently. "Jack it is."

The horse is patient and still as he swings himself back up onto its back and guides it away from the creek bed. The sun beginning to dip in the sky and the air is not quite as hot as it was earlier. Both Josh and Jack ride off with no destination in mind, heading north and content to stop in the next town they come across.

Two days later they stop in a little town called Amador City. Three days after that a man named Sam Chisholm walks into a crowded saloon to collect on a warrant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading guys! :D


	6. Rose Creek

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's not afraid and he doesn't have any regrets; he's made his peace with all of this and he's ready to see what the afterlife has in store. The sky above him blurs, hazy images of clouds and trees and shapes that mean nothing. He closes his eyes and lets himself go, thinking it's finally over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this was one of those moments where my brain just completely ignored every ounce of medical/anatomical knowledge it's ever learned. Literally so many things would have done Josh in (bullet wounds, shock, concussive blast trauma, internal bleeding, etc) but the fandom side of my brain was just like, "nah, he's fine" and rolled with it. So, yeah, that's how this chapter happened. Obviously this is a bit of a different ending from the movie so be prepared!

The first bullet catches him just below the ribs, ripping through flesh and fabric alike and causing him to stagger. He nearly trips, biting out a curse and pressing a hand over the bleeding wound. Vazquez calls out his name in alarm and returns fire, cursing in Spanish and dropping two more of Bogue's men like rabid dogs. Josh keeps running and dives into an empty shop, ducking behind the wall as more bullets splinter the wood above his head.

He digs a handkerchief out of his pocket and presses it to the bullet wound, hissing and biting back and entire mouthful of curses along the way. It wasn't a fatal wound, he's pretty sure the bullet punched straight through the fleshy part of his side without hitting anything vital. It hurts like a son of a bitch though and the bleeding is heavy. He curses again.

He sees Billy from the corner of his eye, the knife-thrower nodding toward his bloody shirt and giving him look of silent concern.

Josh grits his teeth and presses the handkerchief into the wound a bit harder. "So far, so good," he grinds out, ducking a little as another bullet punches through the wall above him.

The first part of their plan had gone off without a hitch, Bogue's men funneling in exactly where they wanted them to. The initial dynamite blasts had thinned out their numbers significantly but there were still close to one hundred men shooting up the town and now they were left to cull those numbers even further.

It wasn't Bogue's men that were the problem, though (they'd anticipated and prepared for an army). It was all the tiny, insignificant little things that cumulated into much larger problems. The townspeople were still scattering and running for cover, ducking into doorways and seeking shelter wherever they could. It added more confusion to an already chaotic and unpredictable situation and consequences arose. Consequences that would more than likely get them all killed.

Josh had made his peace with the likelihood that most of them wouldn't make it out of this alive. Emma had asked him yesterday what he was doing this for, what he stood to gain by helping them and in all honesty he didn't have a good answer. He'd be lying if he said he hadn't gotten into it for the money; that was certainly the driving factor in the beginning. But as time went on and he began to understand what was at stake, the town and its people, his reasons shifted.

He wasn't a good man, hadn't been one for years and years, but he thinks that maybe defending this town, helping Emma and her neighbors keep their land, maybe that was something a good man did.

He starts to stand again as another spattering of bullets peppers the side of the building. He curses again and drops back down, rearranging the grip on his pistols. The pain from the bullet wound he could deal with; sure, it was was making him dizzy and a little bit nauseous but it was manageable. The blood, on the other hand, needed to be taken care of. It was covering his hands and making his fingers slick and he couldn't have that if he was still planning to shoot with any kind of accuracy.

He gets a grip on his guns and stands back up, ducking out of the building and back onto the street. Billy covers him as he runs, shooting down two more men in a hail of bullets and gunpowder. Vasquez is already in the street, Josh coming up to join him, and Billy flanking along the back. They gather together on the street, side by side and guns drawn. For the briefest of moments, the shooting stops.

The peace doesn't last long though. There's a tremendous crash from the corner of town, a shout somewhere between a war cry and a warning whoop. The three men startle slightly and look toward the source of the noise, catching sight of a figure rushing toward them. A horse jumps over a set of burning wagon toward the edge of town and Goodnight bursts into the town square.

"Get inside! Get inside!" the Cajun commands, rounding the three of them up and ushering them toward an open building. "They've got a Goddamn gatling gun!"

The warning comes not a moment too soon. They duck inside the nearest building just a split second before the world explodes in a spray of gunfire. Josh is still half standing in the doorway when Vasquez shoves him down to the ground and growls, "get down!"

The town is swept from one end to the other, a devastating spray of bullets that cuts through anything and everything. Townspeople are mowed down in the street, windows shatter and buildings are splattered with dozens of bullet holes.

Goodnight is still shouting warnings even though it's painfully obvious what's happening now. He's dragging people into buildings, shoving them to the floor and keeping them away from the windows. Josh and Vasquez stay tucked inside the building and reload their guns, taking out a few more gunmen on the fringes once they're done. They've lost track of Billy but it's a reasonable assumption that the knife-thrower has gone to join Robicheaux in his efforts to round up the wayward townsfolk.

After several long, terrifying seconds, the gunfire stops and the town is left is ruined silence. For a moment nothing else happens and there's an air of tense anticipation of what to expect. That silence is cut by a shout from across the street, panicked and desperate, and Josh looks up to see the general store the children were sheltered in on fire.

He curses and jumps up, wincing as the movement tugs at his wounded side, and breaks into a run across the street. He's not worried about Bogue's men or the gatling gun at the moment; all he sees is the smoking storefront.

"The children!" he shouts, dashing across the street to the burning building. He nearly crashes into Sam as they both reach the building at the same time, rushing inside and flipping open the trapdoor, motioning for the women and children down below to come up. They come upstairs in a panic, unsure of where to go or what to do. Sam just ushers them outside and points to a field, urging them to run that way and not to stop. No place is safe but honestly anywhere is safer than here at the moment.

The second round of gunfire starts a few seconds later and the town is thrust into chaos once again. Goodnight and Billy have made it up into the bell tower of the church, returning fire as best they can but it won't be enough. With that gatling gun still in commission, Bogue will cut the town right out from under them, mowing it down in a spray of bullets until there's nothing but sawdust left.

Josh and Sam end up on the other side of a building, tucked beneath a wagon full of coffins. It would be hilariously ironic if they weren't being shot at right now.

Sam peaks out from behind the wagon, taking stock of their situation. When he looks back at Josh, he catches sight of the growing bloodstain on his shirt and frowns. "You doin' alright?" he asks, dubious of the answer before Josh ever gives it to him.

Josh gives him a pained grin and nods. "So far so good," he mutters, pressing his arm back against the wound. It's throbbing now, deep and vicious, and each breath feels like a piece of hot coal is being jammed into his side. He groans and lets his head fall back against the building. "I'm gonna need a new vest after this."

The warrant officer looks like he wants to say something but he keeps it to himself.

Josh grits his teeth over the noise of the gun and glances toward the hill. "We gotta do something about that gatling gun," he mutters, slightly breathless from adrenaline and pain.

Sam looks at him again and smirks slightly. "Hey," he says, waiting until the younger man looks up again. "We're even now; you know, for the horse. You don't owe me anything."

Josh coughs out a laugh. "Yeah? Well, you owe me something." The pain is making him reckless, or maybe it's the blood loss, but either way he's coming up with a really ridiculous plan. _Forty pounds of bad ideas and dumb luck._

Sam frowns in confusion. "What's that?"

"Cover," Josh says, not giving the other man a chance to answer before jumping up and running across the street to grab the nearest horse he could find. He hears Sam call out behind him, shout his name over the roar of gunfire, but Josh never slows down.

He steers the horse in the direction of the gatling gun, a pack of Bogue's men breaking away from the town and trailing along behind him. He doesn't slow down and he doesn't look back as they're picked off one by one. The others are watching his back, keeping his pursuers away from him and dropping them in the field as he rides on.

Josh pushes forward undaunted. He knows this is a one way trip and that in all likelihood he'll be killed before he ever gets close enough. He has to try though, even if it kills him he has to try. He just needs to get close enough to the gun-

Another bullet catches him in the upper chest, just beneath the collarbone and punching all the way through. The air is forced out of his lungs, both from the impact and from the bullet itself and the gasp that accompanies it is dull and breathy. The gasp turns into a growl and he tightens his grip on the reigns. Through some miracle he manages to stay upright and keeps pushing forward.

There's another shot and yet another bullet, this one striking a little further down. It punches through his vest but deflects off something (a button maybe? That sheriff's badge he lifted off the town's corrupt official?) because it doesn't go all the way through. It's buried deep in the muscles of his chest, not deep enough to pierce the lung but the impact was enough to shatter two of his ribs. This one slows him down and he loosens his grip on the reigns, groaning heavily and slumping. He can't hold on anymore and he feels himself sliding, slipping, falling...

He lands flat on his back in the middle of the field, air knocked out of him and struggling to breathe. He lays there for several painful seconds, staring at the sky and forcing himself to stay conscious. He vaguely wonders if this is where he's going to die, if this is where it ends, but that can't be it because he still has a job to finish.

With a heavy, pained grunt, he pulls himself upright and begins the slow, painful stagger toward the gun. Bogue's men watch him approach, their guns trained on his every move. One of them shoots again, catching him in the leg and causing him to go down heavily.

He falls to his knees and doesn't get up again, pain and exhaustion hitting him like a tidal wave. The men continue to watch him and he thinks for a second they might just shoot him in the head and be done with it but they don't. It occurs to him they're enjoying the show.

He slumps on his knees and sits back on his heels, fishing one final cigarette out of his pocket. If this is how he's going to go, then so be it. The lighter sputters and flickers and won't light. Piece of junk…

One of Bogue's men steps forward and offers him a light, the final kind act for a dying man. They'll kill him the second they're done, he knows it. He just won't give them the chance.

He slumps forward and touches the end of his cigarette to the fuse on the dynamite stick he'd kept hidden in his holster. He sits back up slowly, the dynamite hot and ready in his hand.

"I always did have good luck with one-eyed Jacks," he says with a pained, ironic grin. He hears one of the men shout a warning about the dynamite right as he throws it. It sails over their heads and lands just behind their wagon, exploding on impact.

The blast is powerful and devastating and it engulfs both the wagon and Bogue's men in a shower of fire, dirt, and ash. Josh is sent flying backwards across the field, somersaulting through the air like a ragdoll. He had fully expected to be vaporized with the rest of Bogue's men but he underestimated his distance from the gun and ended up just getting tossed by the shockwave instead.

The world tilts and spins sickeningly before he's dropped onto the hard, unforgiving dirt fifty feet away. It takes several long seconds of staring up at the smoke and dust filled sky for him to realize he's not dead. He should be, about a hundred times over he should be, but he's not. Not yet at least.

He can't hear anything (he's pretty sure both ear drums were blown out by the explosion) and he can't move more than a few fingers and toes at a time. Both legs are shattered but remarkably still attached and he can feel his feet (painful as that is) so he knows he's not paralyzed.

He can't move though, his injuries too severe and extensive to allow him the freedom of movement. Between the bullet wounds and the broken bones and the certainty of some kind of internal bleeding, he couldn't move even if he wanted to. Just as well, really...he'll probably succumb to his injuries in a few minutes anyway. He did what he set out to do and that's all that mattered.

The smoke clears slowly overhead and Josh focuses on a single wispy cloud directly above him. He's broken and bleeding all over but his body is in such a state of shock that he barely even feels it. He's content to lay here in this field and die peacefully, his mission accomplished and the town possibly saved. This is as good a place to die as any and he'll take what he can get.

Except he doesn't die. The minutes stretch into hours and he lingers, hovering somewhere just between life and death and everything in between. He doubts he's actually alive anymore, there's no way he could be after everything he'd been through. He's pretty sure he's nothing but a body with a few frayed strings of life still attached to it. Even if he is still somewhat alive, there's no way he can survive for much longer. Death is inevitable by this point.

When evening comes, his breathing begins to dip and stutter even more than it had before and thinks this must be it. He's not afraid and he doesn't have any regrets; he's made his peace with all of this and he's ready to see what the afterlife has in store. The sky above him blurs, hazy images of clouds and trees and shapes that mean nothing. He closes his eyes and lets himself go, thinking it's finally over.

That today was the end of Joshua Faraday.

That is until he regains consciousness inside of the pine box the townspeople buried him in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go! Thanks for reading guys! :D


	7. Grave Encounters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He frowns again and looks at the name inscribed on the cross above the grave. Josh Faraday. Red Harvest witnessed his death from the rooftops of the town, he's sure of it. So how was his grave empty now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! Hope you're doing well! Once again, every ounce of anatomical/medical/physical logic states that Josh should and would be dead ten times over but meh, creative license in writing! Thanks so much for reading guys! :D

The night feels tense and unsettled. The air still smells like smoke and blood, even this far south of the town. It will linger and sit like a cloud for several more days, a hovering veil of death and destruction and barely won victory. The soil will be marked red for days to come, innocent and corrupt blood seeping into the earth.

Red Harvest does not find much rest this night. He is troubled and restless, thoughts dark and turbulent. His two surviving companions have traveled north toward Phoenix to collect another warrant, leaving Rose Creek and its citizens behind. They paid their respects to those they lost and tipped their hats to the town, choosing to push forward instead of looking back. The Comanche warrior does not go with them, preferring the plains and mountains to the crowd of the city.

It's not the only reason he remains behind although he couldn't describe the feeling exactly. It was a tug, both mental and physical, that urged him not to leave. In spite of their victory, something felt unfinished, a task uncompleted and forgotten. He can't think of what it might be or if it has anything to do with the town and its people but for some reason he can't convince himself to leave just yet.

Sleep does not come easily and when he does begin to drift off his dreams are chaotic and troubling. He dreams of darkness and thick, black smoke. There's sand mixed with blood, the combination creating a ruddy paste that clings to everything it touches. A black, eyeless raven perches on a severed limb, a grim harbinger in the wake of all the destruction.

The bird looks at him in his dream, meets his eyes even though it has none of its own, and squawks loudly. The noise is distorted though, half-birdlike screech and half earth-shattering gunshot.

The bird leaves its perch and walks toward him, feathers sloughing off in oily, black streaks on the ground. Each discarded feather turns into a gouge that looks like claw marks in the blood stained earth. The raven keeps approaching but all of its feathers have fallen away now and the bird is little more than a walking lump of bloody flesh and gleaming bone.

It squawks again, impossibly louder than before, and the ground opens up to devour him. He falls into a pit lined with bullets and bones and even though he can see the sky above him, can almost touch it, he can't get out. The raven perches on the edge of the pit and watches him without eyes, a grisly reaper over his fate. It squawks again and the earth begins to fall on top of him, burying him deep in bullets and blood.

He awakes with a start, gasping and sitting up quickly. The fire is still smoldering but the embers are dull and orange as they burn down. The moon is high overhead and the stars are bright, illuminating the night in a soft, silver glow. He looks around carefully, fully expecting to see the eyeless raven hovering in the rocks above him. He sees nothing, only shadows and starlight, but the dream digs at him even in the waking world. It means something, he knows it does, he's just not sure what.

He glances over at his horse and stands up slowly, kicking dirt into the remainder of his fire. Sleep will not return tonight but he is less concerned with it now. There's something he needs to do, something he needs to finish. Even if he doesn't know what that is yet.

His Elders had told him once that his path was different from the rest, that his destiny lay elsewhere. Riding away from Rose Creek in the aftermath of the battle, he had wondered, vaguely, if that was what they had meant. He's less sure of it now, less certain that his path has truly reached its end. His journey doesn't feel complete yet, not even close. It still winds before him, long and distant like it's always been. It's pulling him in one direction though and he knows he must follow it.

He gathers his supplies and swings himself up onto his horse, turning him south and away from the mountains. With the moon still shimmering down above him, he turns and rides back toward Rose Creek.

**OOOOO**

The town is still smoking slightly from the firefight. Windows are still shattered, siding pockmarked with bullet holes, clumps of broken soil and rocks strewn everywhere in the surrounding fields. Most of the bodies have been cleared away already but there are still some littering the fields, gathered together in festering clumps for later burial. The townspeople will get to them eventually after they've tended to their own dead.

He guides his horse silently past one such clump, the smell of blood and decay hovering in the air. These were Bogue's men, murderers and crooks sent to terrorize the town; he feels no sympathy for them. The horse keeps walking and the bodies are left behind.

A hill sits in the distance overlooking the town. It's clear and elevated and there are four wooden crosses hammered into the sun-baked soil at the top. He's drawn to the hill for reasons he can't explain, that overwhelming tug settling in his chest. He turns toward the hill and pushes his horse into a trot. In spite of the feelings driving him, he knows what he'll find up there.

The climb is not steep but he slows his horse to a walk as they ascend the slopes of the hill. The crosses are more visible now, standing tall and proud like benevolent icons in the warm, clear night. He approaches them from the back and stops his horse a few feet away from the line of crosses, sliding off and walking the rest of the way.

The mounds of dirt are still fresh and raised, each cross marked with the name of the town's saviors. A proper burial; it was the least the townspeople could do for the men who helped them save their town. The makeshift graveyard is strewn with flowers and bright red windmills, decorations for the dead. Rose Creek was a poor farmer's town but they made sure their appreciation was known.

One of the mounds beneath the crosses has been disturbed though, dirt pushed back and shoved away from the grave. The hole beneath it is not deep, a combination of hard soil and baked clay making a deeper burial nearly impossible. The Comanche warrior frowns and approaches it carefully, looking down into the hole and seeing a broken lid and an empty coffin.

He frowns again and looks at the name inscribed on the cross above the grave. _Josh Faraday_. The fast-talking man with the cards. The gambler. The one who sacrificed himself for the town, destroyed the gun at the cost of his own life. Red Harvest witnessed his death from the rooftops of the town, he's sure of it. So how was his grave empty now?

The clumps of dirt leading away from the grave create something of a trail and he follows it a few feet down the other side of the hill. It's leading back toward the town. There are dark smears of blood in the grass meaning whatever was making its way down the hill was still alive enough to bleed while doing it. He follows it down a bit further, coming to a stop when he notices a dark figure crumpled in the grass a few feet up ahead.

He hesitates for a moment or so more before approaching the figure cautiously. He takes in the mud/bloodstained clothing and the dirty skin, the broken fingernails and the light, dusty hair. He recognizes the man but it's impossible for him to be alive. The last time he saw him was seconds before the dynamite exploded, taking out the gun and everyone around it. But he's here now, crumpled at the base of the hill he was buried under.

Red Harvest crouches down beside the man, eyeing him carefully. The gunman had collapsed in what looked like mid-drag, sprawled face down and fingers still dug into the tall grass. It was horrific enough that he had been buried alive but even worse that he had apparently clawed his way out of his own grave. He might have been crawling for help, going back toward the town that tried to honor him by giving him a proper Christian burial. From the looks of his legs, dragging himself was the only thing he would have been able to accomplish.

The moonlight is bright but he can't tell if the other man is still alive or not. The bloodstains in the grass are shiny and tacky so they couldn't have been made too long ago. He can't hear anything though, breathing or otherwise, and he wonders if this is what his dreams had been about. Maybe he was too late; maybe the raven had been a messenger of death instead of a warning. He reaches out slowly and touches the other man's shoulder.

He's not expecting a response; he figures the man is either already dead or so close to death that he won't be able to react. But he gets a groan and a curse instead, the man shifting just slightly beneath his hand. In a mixture of surprise and disbelief, the Comanche warrior flips the other man onto his back carefully.

Josh Faraday blinks up at him, very much alive but dazed and in an incredible amount of pain. His face is covered in dirt and sweat and the bullet holes in his clothes are caked with bloody dirt. He's conscious though, which is amazing in and of itself.

"Oh hey," he mumbles, his voice a dry croak that quivers like dry leaves. He blinks several times, squinting and trying desperately focus on the man above him. He winces and shifts and winces again. "Did we win…?"

Red Harvest nods slowly, still not quite believing what he's seeing with his own eyes.

"Great," Josh groans, swallowing convulsively. He grits his teeth and coughs painfully, grimacing as the movement jars his injuries further. "I'd hate...to 'ave blown m'self up for nothin'..."

The Comanche smirks a little then, shaking his head in disbelief. He didn't know much about Josh or the things he stood for; all he knew was that the man fought bravely to protect the town. He'd gambled with his own life in the hopes that the people of Rose Creek might extend theirs and he'd given his life for them. At least that's what they had all thought. Impossible as it was, Josh Faraday was still alive and he planned to keep it that way.

Keeping one hand on the wounded man's shoulder, Red Harvest turns and whistles for his horse. The horse trots over a few seconds later and comes to a stop beside them, standing still and patient as its rider hoists his wounded companion onto its back. He drapes Josh across the front of the horse and hops up behind him, lashing the wounded man to the horse's body to keep him from falling off.

Josh grimaces and grumbles something and goes silent again. The warrior puts his hand on the other man's back, feels him breathe, and guides his horse away the hill. He no longer thinks of raven or paths or what his destiny entails. He has a singular purpose at the moment and he focuses on that.

Keeping his grip on his injured companion, he turns north and gallops toward Phoenix.

**OOOOO**

Josh is pretty sure he's dead and if he's not he definitely should be. He's not exactly sure where he is; he only knows that the room is warm and smells like iodine. He frowns and tries to open his eyes but everything that greets him is white and far too bright to be acceptable. He closes his eyes again.

He doesn't remember how he got here or where exactly _here_ is; his memories are frayed and disconnected like bits of rope loosening at the end of a coil. What he does remember seems distant and hazy, a smoky mirror that obscures more than it shows.

He remembers waking up in the coffin and the sickening panic of being buried alive. There wasn't much room for movement (obviously, because corpses aren't supposed to move) but he managed to fumble for his holster and grab one of his guns, pressing it to the wooden lid. The townspeople had been kind enough to bury them with him and if his math was correct he had maybe one bullet left. If not then he was going to just suffocate and die in this box and no one would know any different. He positioned the gun, braced himself, and fired.

The blast was loud and jarring and kickback smacked him in the face painfully. He was pretty sure if his eardrums weren't already ruptured from the dynamite blast earlier then they definitely would have been then. The dirt came pouring in a split second later and he was just fast enough to cover his mouth and nose with his shirt before the dirt covered his face.

He didn't have much strength and he certainly didn't have the stamina necessary for a subterranean escape but he wasn't about to roll over and die either. He was weak from pain and blood loss but the coffin was only buried about two feet below the surface of the ground so luckily it wasn't too difficult to escape. He figures the shallow grave was part of the reason he hadn't suffocated already (that and the fact that his breathing had been shallow enough for the townspeople to assume him dead and bury him) and he's never been so thankful for tough soil before.

He clawed his way to the surface of his grave, one handful of dirt at a time, and dragged himself out of the ground breathlessly. His legs were still in the hole, boots just barely brushing over the edges of his coffin, and he suppresses the urge to shiver in the warm, balmy night. Buried alive; definitely not something he ever wanted to do again...

Everything else became a blur after that. He vaguely remembers dragging himself down the hill toward the town and collapsing halfway. He remembers a man, a face he recognized, and a horse. He remembers pain and running and pain. He doesn't remember anything else.

He tries opening his eyes again and finds it's a little easier to do so now. The room he's in is small and lit by a single electric lamp in the corner. He's in a bed, naked saved for the sheet draped over him, and there are thick patches of bandages all over his chest and torso. His legs are still broken but they've been set and possibly reset and now they're splinted and bandaged as well.

He frowns and bites back a wince. He should definitely, absolutely be dead.

He hears a muffled noise to his left and turns his head slowly to see where it's coming from. Vasquez is asleep in a chair beside his bed, arms crossed over his chest with his boots resting on the edge of the mattress. There's a bible resting on his lap and it occurs to Josh that he might have been reading to him at some point. The outlaw's hat is pulled low, covering his face, and he's snoring quietly. Or it might be loud as a grizzly bear; Josh is pretty sure his eardrums are still damaged.

Something else catches his attention and he looks over to see Sam standing in the doorway. The warrant officer is leaning against the door with one shoulder, watching him like he's been expecting Josh to wake up at that exact moment.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," he says by way of greeting, smiling softly in the dim light.

Josh frowns because he can't hear him very well and looks around the room again. "Where are we?" he asks, unsure if he's whispering or shouting.

Sam takes pity on him and steps into the room, coming to a stop at the foot of the bed. "A hospital in Phoenix," he says simply, resting his hands on the foot end of the bed frame. "Red Harvest brought you here a little over two weeks ago. He's camped out on the outskirts of the city, waiting to see if all his efforts to save you were in vain. Doctors were amazed you were still alive."

"Pretty surprised about that myself," Josh replies with a suppressed groan. "Really wasn't expecting to walk away from that."

"Well, technically you didn't," Sam reminds him, nodding toward his bandaged legs. "You had more breaks than bones when they started working on you. Docs don't think there was much nerve damage; surprising considering the extent of the damage. They said you should heal up pretty good, so long as you don't break them again."

"I'll keep that in mind," Josh grumbles, letting his head fall back against the pillow. "I'll try to avoid dancing for a while."

Sam smirks but there's another expression on his face that's harder to read. It's in his eyes mostly, deep and untouchable like a sinkhole. "That was a pretty crazy stunt you pulled," he says finally, shaking his head a little. "Would have killed any other man ten times over."

Josh shrugs one shoulder, which hurts, and looks back at him. "What can I say? My mama used to always tell me I was forty pounds of bad ideas and dumb luck. Guess that paid off in the end."

Sam smirks again and raps his knuckles on the foot of the bed. "Dumb luck," he repeats like he's testing the words out and seeing how well they stick. "Bad ideas and dumb luck saved the entire town. I'd be more impressed if you hadn't nearly blown yourself up in the process."

Josh huffs slightly. "Hey, it worked, right? Can't be too mad at me for that. And cut me some slack, Sam, I practically died taking out that gun."

"Practically," Sam repeats again, equal parts disbelief and bemusement.

"Practically," Josh agrees, slumping back again.

Vasquez chooses that moment to wake up, looking at the bed and coming face-to-face with the injured gambler. He looks surprised for a split second, like maybe he's dreamed this exact same scenario several times before, but that surprise quickly fades into irritation and he fixes Josh with a warning glare.

"Crazy, stupid idiot," he mutters before breaking off into a string of Spanish that most definitely includes several curses and colorful threats. Josh doesn't speak Spanish but judging from the gestures and the tone of voice, he knows when he's being called a stupid asshole.

He waves one hand weakly at the enraged Mexican. "Nice to see you too, amigo."

Vasquez's rant finishes with him swatting Josh with his hat and nudging him in the hip with his boot. It's probably supposed to hurt more but he's mindful of the injuries and settles with a light push more than anything else. Finished, he slumps back in the chair and crosses his arms again, his foot still resting against the gambler's hip as if to reassure himself that he's there.

A companionable silence fills the room for a few minutes, interrupted only by the sounds of the city outside the window.

"You take care of my horse, Sam?" Josh asks after a minute, turning his attention back to the warrant officer.

Sam looks at him and smirks a little. "You mean _my_ horse?"

Josh has just enough energy to look shocked and appalled. "You said we were even."

"Yeah, that was before you went and got yourself blown up. We thought you were dead so I regained custody of the horse and let Teddy keep it."

Josh groans and slumps back in defeat. "Damn…"

"Hey," Sam says, catching his attention and nodding toward a small table in the corner of the room. Two guns are sitting on one end, cleaned and polished and gleaming. "Kept your guns for you, at least."

Josh manages a smile and settles back onto the mattress a bit more comfortably. "Magnificent."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you all enjoyed it! Y'all are the best! :D

**Author's Note:**

> More to come soon! Thanks for reading guys! :D


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